


rounding the corner

by doublelead



Category: THE iDOLM@STER: SideM
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-12-16 10:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21035033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublelead/pseuds/doublelead
Summary: "I don't think I'd mind," comes his answer, faster than his own thoughts.  "After all, an alien, a ghost, could lead me across the ocean, past the stars, to another galaxy."He still dreams of paper rockets, filled to the brim with hopes and wishes."It'd be nice, if I could do that too."





	rounding the corner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [makkuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/makkuru/gifts).

> Happy birthday, Mackie!! I wanted to surprise you with a present, so I ninja'd the hell out of this laughs. As a result though, I wasn't sure what to write, so this turned out to be a whole lot of ????????? [confused jazz hands]
> 
> But uh, I hope you enjoy vaguely October vibe Michios!

Sometimes, he dreams of the sea. Sluicing around his ankles, gentle, Osaka Bay from the beach along Cape Kakeouji.

_Curious,_ he didn't think the tide would reach this far. 

The waves are unchanging as ever, each ebb and flow bubbling between his toes. He's standing on concrete, though, suddenly ― _or has been, for a while, _he isn't quite sure ― grit instead of gravel digging onto the pad of his heels. 

He blinks once, twice, dazed, tilts his head as he wonders. The torii gates of Uchida Shrine isn't where it's supposed to be. Somehow, still, he catches the speckled grey stone fence within his periphery. 

The stop sign overhead should have been a little further out, too.

He remembers it away from beaten path, off to the side, right by the crossing at the main road, but, yet, now, he seems to have lost track of the time he's spent staring at it, all the same. 

_Oh._

_That's right._

He had wanted to bring Jirou and Rui here, one day.

"Is this the sight that you wanted us to see?"

Michio looks down, across the tabletop, past the edge, mapping out each curve and colour of the laminated grains he can't quite recall. 

His feet doesn't reach the floor. 

He reaches out, almost instinctively, to the seat next to his. 

The tips of his fingernails knocks against the buckle of his leather backpack, falls, against the notches, three punched holes leftover on the strap. 

His breath comes out a little lighter than what he's used to, a voice he hasn't come to recognise as his in ten, twenty years. 

It's the same sea, the same sky ― behind white wooden frames, this time, from the inside of the cafe he and his grandmother had used to frequent. 

The clouds drift past as slowly as he remembers. There's the usual odd or so seagull perched atop one corner of the low wall.

_He isn't sure, actually,_ now that he thinks about it.

Across the table, Michio can't quite see the young man's face. Soft wisps of steam drifts upwards, from the single cup of coffee set between the two of them. 

Awajishima autumns had always been unusually bright, crystalline through the windows. His guest leans his cheek against an open palm, bright blond hair stark under the sun's glare. 

"Was this the sight that you've always seen, growing up?"

He used to see further, he thinks. Triangulum at the edge of the sky, nights kicking his feet forward under a blanket of stars, two fingers hooking sand-stained cotton shoes ― his white socks, fold down thrice to the heel, brushing against the hem of his shorts.

_Two three-magnitude stars, one four-magnitude star, h_ _ome to a galaxy almost a mirror to ours. _

He thinks of fireworks, paper rockets, his little sister's wishes, crayon doodles strapped to its tail. 

The scent of autumn carries Michio out of one dream to another, rounding the osmanthus shrubs at the corner, his sister's weight against his back on their walk back home.

\--------

There's a spark in the distance, a dimly-lit classroom from a more recent memory. It's dark outside the glass panes, residual embers from the school festival crackling, fading. 

He hears humming down the hall, off-beat, a gentle song he starts to chase through his footsteps, almost unthinkingly, just as quietly. Each thump and cadence leads him up ― past his office that he greets like an old friend. 

_Up ―_ through the south wing staircase, going for further, longer, higher, than the familiar rhythm he had known by heart, the time it takes between each of his classes. 

_Up_ ― with the echoes of his leather loafers against the linoleum tiles, resounding, reverberating, as he finds himself, finally, at the third floor bridge.

The long stretch of glass windows overlooks the inner yard. Barely peeking in past the railings, are powder blue-tipped petals, tartarian asters in a row along the corner wall. 

That same spark lights up again, a single firework far in the sky. Michio's eyes are drawn to the figure it illuminates, off-white and coffee stains, hunched in an attempt to appear smaller, just as he remembers, tending over those same pots under the shade of the bridge's overhang. 

"Did you find your way here on your own?" he hears him say, slowly, short of a whisper. 

Michio considers his response, curls his fingers under his chin. 

"No," he says, after a while. "I'm friends with an alien and a ghost."

The other man chuckles, his back still turned towards Michio. He instead skitters his fingers across the windowsill, then upwards, towards the night.

"I wonder if that also makes you anything else but human, then."

"I don't think I'd mind," comes his answer, faster than his own thoughts. "After all, an alien, a ghost, could lead me across the ocean, past the stars, to another galaxy."

He still dreams of paper rockets, filled to the brim with hopes and wishes. 

"It'd be nice, if I could do that too." 

_It'd be nice, _if he could hold their hands as they find the courage to take off, leaps and bounds, light-years on their own journeys traversing the horizon. 

\----------

"Was this what you wanted us to see?" Again, in a voice Michio has heard before, as if from conversation they had once had, somewhere, some time ago, in a dream.

The sea is pink, this time ― just around the corner, lights in tandem with quiet murmurs. 

_It's strange, _that this is the sight Michio vividly recognises while he's awake. More so, than everything so far that he had thought of as home. 

He breathes easy ― sees, clearly, under the shadows of the stage backdrops, the curtains suspended high above their heads, that his boots are white, tipped black at the toes and heels.

Michio shakes his head. "This was where I wanted everyone to find."

**Author's Note:**

> Osaka smells Really nice right now


End file.
